Aethosphere: Book 1: Coalescence of Shadows and Light

By Jeremiah D. Schmidt

Another age of turmoil is set to erupt once again as the species of Aethosphere race towards repeating the same old mistakes. War. As the Iron Empire stretches further and further across the skies, counter-forces in the west hatch a desperate plot to strike at the very engine of imperial life, the levitational crystal atmium.

Bar Bazzon, hero of the Great Skies War and captain of the strata-frigate Chimera, is an age-weary aeronaut just trying to do right by his crew, but when a cargo run goes awry, and their escape is complicated by savage raiders, Captain Bazzon ends up with more trouble than he had bargained for. Suddenly, with a mysterious acolyte haunting his decks, whispers of impending doom begin to drift on the wind.

Now Bar's left with a hard choice. Does he chase adventure and intrigue under the shadow of his dubious past? Or, does he deliver up his cargo and then fly fast and fly hard from all the troubles of a world with too many maladies to count? It’s the answer to this choice that puts not only the fate of his crew in jeopardy but also that of an entire isle and its inhabitants...

Adventure begins where the forces of shadows and light coalesce.

Aethosphere: Coalescence of Shadows and Light is the first part in a sweeping steampunk-inspired saga that chronicles the adventures of the airship Chimera as her crew seeks to uncover a tangled web of destiny. A destiny spanning back to the origins of a broken world, to the monster lurking at the heart of it, to the prophetic dreams of the future, and to the promise of an ancient machine. But do they have the wherewithal to set everything to right? Or might all their good intentions just bring about the final horror that started so long ago?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeremiah D. Schmidt
• Release date: Mar 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311079473

Jeremiah D. Schmidt

Jeremiah D. Schmidt was born in Minnesota in the early 80's, raised in Maine during the 90's, and has frequented Florida when New England winters have proven tiresome. He attended the University of Maine at Orono during a time when the Black Bears hockey team was winning, and received his bachelor's degree in Anthropology back when a liberal arts degree seemed like a good idea. In the years since, he's worked as a furniture maker, a cinema projectionist, a grounds keeper, a GIS map technician, and an autobiography writer (writing autobiographies in the third person). He's always had a passion for storytelling, not verbally though (he was much to shy for that), and so handcrafted many a book in his childhood. Later, he would start to flush these stories out, after realizing they wouldn't write themselves, and that carrying drywall is a miserable job. Jeremiah's first real book, Aethosphere: Coalescence of Shadows and Light, is available for e-book purchase and has been read by perhaps a dozen adventurous spirits. His hope is to reach a dozen more.

Book preview

Map of Aethosphere

Prologue

High in the snow-blasted mountains of Founder Isle, icy gusts hammered the charred exterior of a factory. Its brick shell creaked and groaned like rotten bones, but provided just enough shelter for the renegade scientist hunched over a makeshift worktable within. Cold sweat dripped off the tip of his nose, and where it fell, inky smudges spread across the notes scattered around his work. With a tremulous hand he hastily wiped away a film of vapor from his glasses, focusing on the remaining solder points inside the voltage transformer’s gutted readout gauge.

Dr. Damon Cross shuddered. So close, he reassured himself as tendrils of acrid smoke drifted up from the line of transistors, smelling of solvents and metal. With the final component in transit, the excitement left him hardly able to sit still and so he’d chosen to pass the time by testing the power modulator—again. The circuit had blown, justifying his redundant testing, and keenly reminded him of his past failure. All those years of careful posturing, of intense research, and perpetual groveling, and then the interference, the failure, and the tribulations that followed… the hardships of exile, of struggling day in and day out just to recreate a pale façade of what I once stood to accomplish.

Cross shuddered again against the clammy chill creeping through his thick fur coat.

The harsh subarctic wind, howling against the boarded windows, only served to reinforce what he’d come to endure over his years on the run. The laboratory had become a prison just as decrepit as the one the Empire might have tossed him in, had he not fled, and therein stood the bitter irony of his condition. He just might have fared better had he returned to Junction and faced justice; maybe his work would have exonerated him.

Atrocious, inadequate—his surroundings were nothing more than a cold and dark supply closet tucked away in the soaring corpse of an abandoned factory. A fire had long ago erased the details of its industry, just as time had erased the vigor of his own convictions. Both were nothing but gutted husks, tangled collections of hidden memories and motivations, both existing in cauterized rubble accented by the sad stink of ash and char, and with only their ghosts to drive them on.

It’s all too small, too inefficient for the scope of this project Damon lamented, glancing up to the single arc-bulb, buzzing inconsistently in its bare sconce overhead. It reminded him that those words had become his litany as the months marched into nine long year.

And though none of the carefully recreated monitoring equipment worked as intended in that hellhole, and though the steam driven engine he’d taken from a wrecked auto-cart was underpowered and corroded to near ruin, somehow he persisted. Like the engine that coughed and sputtered, pushing out electricity just as readily as hissing steam, he had made do. After all, what choice did he have? His muses demanded results. And so he improvised the necessary adjustments and counted on the careful observations he’d taken when first attempting this stage of the experiment some fourteen years prior.

The notes beneath him had helped, shuffled and reshuffled until any semblance of order was lost, but it didn’t matter. Dr. Cross had soon realized that all the calculations and the formulas and the protocols he truly relied upon were safely harbored by the shadows lurking within him.

"Let the cold howl on," whispering one from the dark, let it pierce and penetrate this building—freeze the sweat to your forehead if it must—so long as you finally finish our work.

"And then all of this hardship will come to an end," added a second.

Damon and his keepers knew they were close, and the excitement was palpable, tasting like blood on the tongue. It seemed like ages ago when last they stood on the threshold of success. The growing anticipation sent those mad vipers in Damon’s brain writhing.

For forty-one years he gave so much of himself over to their ambitions that he didn’t know what was left of his own. In fact there was very little of himself in general left unmodified. He hardly recognizes himself in the rearview mirror he’d tacked to the wall. Alterations, age, stress, and long nights spent working had worn his appearance into a ghoulish mockery of the fresh-faced man who had volunteered for that important mission so long ago. It might as well have been a different person altogether.

Not only had his face changed—the familiar features of his parents’ lineage utterly erased—but his ideals had changed as well. Too long spent within enemy territory, he supposed, but new priorities had overridden everything, and he stood painfully near to the final step. The proximity of it wracked his body in convulsive bouts of nervousness. So many years spent doing the bidding of his hidden masters, one after the other—so many allegiances changed, like a flag caught in a relentless and turbulent wind. No man in the history of the world had gone through what he’d gone through, been expected to do what he’d done—sacrificed so much…

With the last link soldered, Damon pulled himself from the table, his bones popping and creaking like the factory around him as he attempted to straighten himself, only to settle on a buzzard’s hunch. Before it’s ready for him, just one final piece. Cross bent down to seize a travel-weary satchel from the soot-blackened floor. Our prized possession, he fawned, plunging a clawed hand into the open flap.

"And the key to all this."

With utmost reverence, the scientist pulled free a fist-sized metal sphere and held it aloft.

"The Devil’s Heart," whispered those hidden voices in chorus as Dr. Cross rotated the orb in his hand. Just holding its exacting weight consumed the scientist with fervor, and he licked at his cracked lips.

The final phase—the easiest phase—a simple introduction…a reintroduction if you want to get technical.

He had waited as long as he could, forcing himself to delay the moment for six agonizing years. He needed to; after all, haste, brought on by imperial bureaucratic meddling, forced his hand before—forced him to take rash action on a subject too young to be viable. Fourteen years later, all his personal trials; the five spent on the run, the nine spent recreating the initial experiment here on Founder had taxed him to the last. So many years of pretending to blend into a petty Candaran community; too many years stuck in one place. He could feel the Iron Empire’s teeth nipping at his neck—feel their claws raking his spine. But his personal demon’s urged him to work on, whispering forever impatiently in his ears:

"For joy, the time is at hand!"

"And this time, no one will be around to stop us."

"Damn those meddlers who caused this delay."

Damon held the orb close to his face, a hairsbreadth from his nose, and let his tired bloodshot eyes trace the paths of deep spiral etchings that transected the sphere’s pitted and ancient surface. Flames, burning within the furnace, crept out through poorly riveted seams to cast dancing light across the relic’s bronze skin, giving the metal a deep and lustrous glimmer. The scientist relished in the details, found them savory and soothing upon his turbulent mind. They had a way of bringing everything into focus, just like when the perfect blend of ice-cold isopropanol alcohols caused deoxyribonucleic acid to aggregate harmoniously… perfection. In his hands he could almost imagine it pulsing with life, like a living thing waiting to be born. He swore it was warm despite the cold. Though sometimes it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t—could he hear it whispering to him?

The shades seem to think so.

Turning his treasure over he found the only blemish to its perfection, a small placard, a vulgar vandalism carelessly welded onto the sacred treasure by blasphemous imperial catalogers. His rage had burned the image of that placard into the waiting recesses of his mind, so that even with his eyes closed he could clearly see the Iron Empire’s chain-link emblem. Beneath it: ‘Ar-1858-4-15’ was scrawled in smaller font, promising that somewhere in the imperial archives existed a file-filled box with a similar designation.

"Damn her tardiness in bringing the child! That mistress of yours left nearly an hour ago to fetch him. What could be taking so long?"

"He’s probably still asleep, the lateness of the hour is beyond his delicate constitution, muttered Damon to the voices within. Distracted, he stared at the relic through limp strands of greasy black hair. He’s always been slow to rise."

"A flawed husk, and yet so much potential." The shades spook, haunting his mind, manifesting in the darkest corners of his lab, blending into the contours of shadows already there. The silhouette of a mixing table, piled high in beakers, pipettes, burners, and test tubes became the lean outline of a smiling serpentine monstrosity. Another shadow, as immovable as an imperial dreadnaught, frowned as it dominated the umbral gloom caught between furnace and wall, a grimace of barely contained rage blazing over the affixed plate of its pallid face. The third and final specter, lurking just behind Damon’s own casted form, observed everything through a veneer of porcelain contemplation. Ancient names accompanied those terrifying ghosts: Elatus, Iratus, and Quietus.

Damon, honey, I brought Aayan, said a fragile voice, snapping the doctor back to reality. Could you please tell me what this is all about now?

The cinnamon scent of Ingrid’s perfume intruded into the room and the scientist gritted his teeth, refusing to turn to face her. There was, in fact, very little he found pleasing about that woman he called ‘wife’; that life he called ‘a prison sentence’.

It took you long enough. Dr. Cross snapped his head around, finding mother and son lingering in the doorway. If only another had the proper genetic markers.

Beneath a thick parka of waxed canvas, lined in bleached fur, Ingrid’s face peeked out, gleaming red after the trek from their small cabin back in the old security station down the hill. Loose strands of dirty blond hair sat plastered against her pale Hierarch cheeks, and under her white-within-white eyes hung weary bags like ugly blemishes. She may have been crying earlier, but did he really care? She had the boy and that’s the only thing that mattered.

Clinging to her side, the child yawned heavily as he lulled in place, half asleep in the folds of his own thick coat.

I’m… I’m sorry, Damon. Her voice was as willowy as her starved figure. Aayan had a bad dream and it took a long time to comfort him. He said monsters were coming for him.

Monsters…? The irony did not escape the scientist.

Ingrid frowned before working up the courage to ask: Why do you need him… now? Can’t this wait until morning, Damon?

"Wait! Can this wait! We’ve waited long enough, you filthy lowtrue blood-traitor!"

It’s delicate, my dear. He slumped under the effort of speaking to her, as though to do so sucked away his vital essence. Suffice to say that prudence demands caution, and the night is a fine companion for both. Besides, we’ve waited long enough—

We?

Bring the child and place him in the chair, he ordered briskly, pointing to an ugly wood and steel contraption hunched in the corner. Whether his wife knew it was a salvaged electric chair or not, she didn’t say, but when she hesitated, Dr. Cross reassured her: He’ll be fine.

At least she’s loyal—if not to a fault, he thought as he watched her ease a listless Aayan into the uncomfortable metal seat. But then she should be, after the lengths I went through to requisition her from that squalid bilge-oil rig brothel.

Damon brought his prized orb—the heart of the project—over and set it gently into a special cradle he’d affixed to the chair’s back; screwing the contact points into the relic’s pitted surface. Ingrid watched in silent agitation as the fanatical doctor strapped the boy’s hands and legs down with leather bindings, but as he lowered the chair’s metal skull cap towards his precious little head, her eyes flashed wild. Dr. Cross thought for a moment she’d interfere, but he knew the way to stop her, knew the gesture that controlled her suppressed fears. Taking a deep breath, the cruel doctor slowly shook his head in silent disappointment. Such a simple act and yet it stopped her cold. She even backed up a pace while chewing at her lower lip.

A pang of guilt, icy like the freezing rain pattering down through the rotted roof, chilled Damon’s veins. Needlessly cruel or efficient…? Either way, your father’s last gesture has left its own lasting impression, my dear. Fear of abandonment can be a potent neutralizer, very potent indeed.

Wires, looking like the scant hairs of a Necrosis plague victim’s rotted scalp, cascaded from the helmet down along the sides of the child’s face. An oversized lever hung from the cradle, poised like an imperial guillotine and promising to end to all his years of tribulation with a pull.

The boy began to cry. Father, it’s heavy, and it’s so cold on my head!

Hush, Aayan, this will only take a moment, he snapped back.

"And how special a moment it's going to be!"

The scientist sought words of comfort for the boy, but found he possessed none. The child was his subject, simple as that—and those years spent playing father were for this moment alone.

"Damon… Dr. Cross, I know we agreed never to discuss your work, but now this… I need to kn—" A sudden crash rocked the ruined factory beneath their feet, cutting Ingrid short. Tires squealed to a halt.

Damon froze in momentary confusion. The roar of an engine continued to rumble through the once quiet haunt. Grumbling in exasperation, he skittered out the door to the catwalk outside his lofty lab. If it was townie-kids come to make mischief in the middle of the night again he would make sure they paid dearly.

Gripping the rusted handrails, he peered down past the skeletal beams into the disturbed twilight below, discovering a pair of headlights cutting a blazing path through the darkness. It was a transport steamer-truck, and the factory’s doors lay broken over its sturdy black hood, upon which the imperial chain-link emblem winked out in terrifying implication. Seconds later, there was yelling, an issuing of orders as soldiers clad in tan and gray trench coats began spilling from the canvas topped bed, rifles at the ready. A man, adorned in black and gold armor, stepped heavily from the passenger-side door.

What is it? Ingrid stood breathless, and when Damon turned, he found his wife’s eyes wide with fright.

Back in the room their son could be heard crying in abandonment.

Damon narrowed his eyes and squeezed the rail. Soldiers of the Empire, he growled, and led by one of the Emperor’s own personal Nocshatten, no less. Exhaust steamed up from the truck and began filtering into the rafters, corrupting the cold mountain air with its oily stink.

Nocshatten, gasped Ingrid as her ivory gaze locked on the armored man moving methodically through the dusty gloom below. Tinny orders rang through the slotted visor of his helmet; the black armor seeming to shed all light even as its gold inlay burned with a fire of its own. Panic washed over the woman, and she brought a hand to her mouth to stifle a terrified cry. Why are they here?

Why for me, of course, replied Dr. Cross with cruel indifference.

Beside him Ingrid burst into tears. But why…? You’re a fertility doctor?

Up there! a soldier’s yell drowned her out. You are ordered by the Iron Empire to surrender immediately!

"No, no, not again, not now!" howled one of the voices in his mind. We’re so damn close!

"Do it Cross," urged another. If you’re going to do it, do it now, before it’s too late.

Damon sprang back towards the room, drawing a sudden hail of rifle fire with his actions. Bullets pinged off the walls, powdering the brick, and sending bits of shrapnel raining down over him. In no time at all the air became rife with the stink of gunpowder and dust.

Ingrid screamed in pain behind him. Damon, help me! When he looked back, he found her already on the ground, clutching at a wounded leg. Fear and desperation were written in the tears streaked across her face and the blood pooling over the dusty floorboards beneath her. Please, she pleaded again, holding out a hand for him to take.

The Nocshatten started for the stairs below. He’s to be taken alive!

"Leave her," the shadows demanded, and Damon staggered back and slammed the door shut behind him. He bolted it even as Ingrid sobbed out in bitter betrayal.

Father, where’s mommy? I’m scared. The small boy cried as he tugged at the straps holding him to the battered execution chair, but the scientist wasn’t listening. He hurried about checking the chair’s helmet fasteners instead, giving the restraints a tug until he was satisfied that everything was in order.

The very building trembled under the thunderous boot falls of imperial soldiers. Outside the laboratory a man could be heard yelling; Ingrid screamed; the abrupt crack of a rifle silenced her forever.

"Do it!"

Damon moved around to the back of the chair, glad that he didn’t have to look at the boy. His blue, tear-filled eyes were mirrors that reflected the scientist’s guilt, and he loathed to look in them any longer. Was it all so bad—pretending to play husband and father? Had it always been scientist and test subjects, or at times did something more intrude? Fond memories of playing with Aayan in the tall grasses around the warehouse, of holding him up high under a summer sun while they both spun and laughed and Ingrid stood smiling nearby, crept to mind.

"Stay focused."

Yes, focus. He’s just a subject, he reminded himself sternly, the woman outside is merely a leftover piece of the equation. To feel for them would cripple everything—would allow the disaster on Trent to resume tormenting his mind—would paint him a villain and not the savior he would become with success.

There it is; the activation lever. It’s time to finish this… history will forgive me later. He gripped it, pulled, straining against its resistance. Outside, a heavy hand began pounding on the metal door. By order of the Empire, open up! The lever yielded, slamming down into place with an authoritative clunk. The cable running from the steam-driven generator to the chair hummed. The capacitor beneath the cradle began to crackle and spark with energy, sending sizzling arcs of electricity into the relic above. Wave after wave of hot current coursed over its spherical surface as the air began to burn with the scent of ozone.

The boy’s sobbing turned to gasping screams of terror.

A crash against the door rocked it on its hinges.

"They’re coming through. Finish it now!"

I have to moderate the reaction. It’s what went wrong the last time on Trent. Too much all at once—critical failure—a breach. The interaction has to be catalyzed slowly.

Another crash split the metal seams down the middle of the door. A hinge tore free from its brink mooring. Another impact like that would bring the whole barricade down.

Damon didn’t have long. Taking the throttle wheel in hand, he gave it a slight turn at first, then more. A gauge on the chair’s side sprang to life, and the child went eerily silent; his small body having become rigid. The nails on Aayan’s tiny fingers dug deep grooves into the chair’s wooden arms while behind him, the relic began to vibrate. Slowly it revolved in its cradle as the electricity from the capacitor caressed over its bronze exterior like a lover. In the reflection off Damon’s glasses, the etched seams along its surface glowed to blue, faintly at first, then more intense as the scientist dared more current. The needle danced higher and the boy convulsed.

The door gave way with a crash, collapsing to the ground as soldiers pushed in behind it.

Damon Cross, you are under arrest! The armored Nocshatten brought his auto-pistol to bear on the doctor’s back. But Damon didn’t move; didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder. We’re so close… Instead, he watched the gauge with near fanatical reverence, waiting until the moment he could increase to the next power increment.

"Finish it!" urged Quietus.

There was no choice, his haunting muse was right. It was then or never. Maybe the initial buildup had been enough. Regardless, Dr. Damon Cross spun the wheel and the needle spiked. In an instant the etchings on the relic turned from blue to brilliant white, more brilliant than even the sun at its midsummer zenith. A shockwave of blinding radiance burst out, so intense it could be felt on the skin like a slap, sending the scientist stagger back. A man—one of the soldiers no doubt—cried out, but Damon locked eyes on the boy… waiting for confirmation.

"At long last!" chattered Elatus with glee, the anticipation proving too much I know it’s begun!

But gunfire interrupted, and all light abruptly vanished.

No!

The deepest darkness ever known settled over the room; leaving Damon in stupefied shock. Only moments ago he stood upon the threshold of success, and then it was as though the entire world had simply ceased to be. A metallic arm found his throat, coming around from behind to pull him backwards and off balance.

Gotcha, doctor, growled the Nocshatten, his words coming in hot breaths steaming across Damon’s cheek. It’s over.

But the relic believed otherwise. Over…? It had hardly begun. Another blast of concentrated light erupted unexpectedly, like lightning in the black of night. Not a man present could stand against its force, and they all stumbled backwards in the wake; some tripping and falling, while those unfortunate enough to have been looking directly at the origin found permanent blindness. The wailing and moaning of the wounded echoed in a chorus, filling the darkness that followed.

It’s going critical, gasped out Dr. Cross, choking on the words as the Nocshatten pulled him by the throat, and as though by agreement, the relic began to hum and then to glow. Ghoulish shadows spread across the floor as Damon was dragged away past walls painted in the strangled light of the Devil’s Heart. Behind him, the relic flared for a third time and the entire isle lurched under foot.

Pull out! ordered the Nocshatten over the relic’s high-frequency whine. Every ticking second its surface grew in brightness, a sun burning towards nova in the cosmos of the scientist’s laboratory. Leave the wounded, evacuate to the truck, now!

Damon could feel his brain quivering under the relentless noise—a noise growing in intensity. He found the vice-grip over his throat traded out for two soldiers dragging him through the warehouse by his arms. They passed over the body of Ingrid with little concern, taking the stairs without so much as letting Damon get his feet under him. The sense that time was running out mounted, and if this failure ended as spectacular as the first… no one on the isle was safe. They were almost running down the steps when the relic flared once more, the whine growing to a screech. Some of the soldiers behind him collapsed, screaming as they pressed their hands to their heads.

The building around them trembled, sections of loose brick wall caved in, scaffolding and catwalks collapsed, and as they reached the ground floor, the entire staircase gave way behind them, crashing down and crushing three troopers in a massive twisted heap. In those moments a hood was hastily thrown over Damon’s head, and he was hoisted into the back of the truck.

Though unable to see the destruction that came next, Damon recognized the sounds. They were the same as back on Trent. Fourteen years ago he had been un-prepared for the events that unfolded, but this time around he knew the symphony of an isle dying in the midst of a reef eruption.

First came the death-wail, a long unyielding howl that pierced the ears and vibrated through the chest. Next came the tortured groan of rocks quaking, disgorging, and shifting out of place deep beneath the mountain. The only new note to the terrible arrangement was the tires spinning through slush as the truck tore down the winding road, bucking from side to side.

Rolling helplessly across the floor, Damon knew he would die; they were simply too far removed from the town’s airstrip—too far removed from any escaping airships. The world-shattering screech that followed only confirmed that fact… that fear. Stone scraping against stone marked the final verse as fiery cataclysm plowed earth aside. The sound was horrendous, the pealing of lightning deafening, the crack and roll of thunder endless. The atmosphere burned and crackled into a tempest under the heat of rising lava.

Even without the ability to see, Damon could still envision the unfolding event; his memory constructing for him a second pair of eyes. He watched as that terrible molten monolith thrust high into a tortured sky, cooling quickly to obsidian branches wreathed in fire and smoke and clawing out in all directions.

A reef eruption… and what a terrible sight to behold for a second time… a last time.

The truck suddenly straightened, the gravel road growing less bumpy, and Damon realized they’d arrived in the outskirts of town, but had they arrived in time? That final verse was already nearing its end in a chore of screaming civilians, and then the truck skidded to a halt in the midst of that panic. Soldiers yelled and clomped around him, several shots were fired nearby, and more screams broke out; some out of rage, but most out of fear. Damon found himself yanked to his feet and pulled towards the relentless wail of sirens. Landing hard on the pavement, he realized the drone of a dozen propellers weren’t far off.

In the hour that followed, hell ascended over Founder, leaving a shattered isle orbiting a solidified tree of lava. Most who called that place home burned in the terrible ovens of that eruption, or fell into the swirling tendrils of the Shrouded Abyss as the isle fragments sagged and toppled, but on a course set for distant Junction, those meager few who did survive, escaped the ruin aboard an imperial dreadnaught. Chief among them was Damon, sitting chained in the brig with nothing but the weight of his failure to occupy his mind. It came crashing down in a single word—a word that was just as cold and indifferent as he had been to his wife and son… a word whispered by shadows:

"Disappointing."

PART I

CLEAR SKIES

Chapter 1

Off in the distant Turquoise Sky, where the Isle of Aberdeen hung along the northern fringe of the Procyon Cluster, Evayah Dufleur clenched her father’s necklace tightly to her chest as she crouched in the monastery’s musty crypt, looking for courage from the feel of the familiar. Twisting the burnished chain between slender fingers helped occupy her jittery nerves but otherwise did little against the trepidation churning the bile in her stomach to ice and locking her in place. Against the pervasive chill of the crypt, she shivered, eager for a return to the warm comfort of the nave back up the dusty wooden stairs winding above her. It brought into question the rationale of committing such a reckless act in the first place. Was peace of mind really worth the risk of getting caught?

"Sometimes even adults can get themselves into trouble," her father had once explained to her on a night long ago. The statement seemed impossible to a child, but over the years had lent itself to a dawning understanding; never as poignant as in light of her own disobedience. Evayah knew she shouldn’t be down in the catacombs. They would know she was eavesdropping if they discovered her there, but the visiting padis’i cleric and his entourage had brought her friend Syben with them.

Though Syben was nearly a man in age, and fully capable of taking care of himself, she still feared where they were leading him. What purpose could they have with him?

The murmuring voices were close, echoing from just a ways down the narrow passage, where torchlight played erratically off the roughened stonework. It seemed the entourage had stopped somewhere beyond the gentle curve of the wall; in a place Evayah had never dared intrude. The monastery’s hallowed foundations were marked forbidden, but after Syben was whisked away by a sea of officials, she’d been compelled to follow regardless.

Voices warbled just beyond audible and Evayah risked plunging deeper. Though not sure what the punishment for spying on one of the Amhan Firinn theocrats might be, she knew the punishment for spying on a monk was scouring the kitchen’s greasy ovens for a week. Something told her the punishment for her infraction would be far more substantial… and yet she didn’t care. They’ve taken Syben, she reminded herself and that was all that mattered.

Tightening her hair-wrap and gathering the simple linen robes layered around her shivering form, Evayah tentatively crept forward. Clack. The sound of her own hard slippers striking off the unyielding floor set her nerves on edge and she froze. Her ears rang with the noise of it, her breath caught in her throat while she waited for someone to come out of the gloom after her. Dread rang clear in the pounding of her heart. Can I make it to the stairs if I start running?

Glancing back she realized the real question was whether or not she could disappear out the mossy ceiling of the antechamber in time? Indecision gripped her and the seconds passed by, but the voices continued, heedless, and clearer after only those few tentative steps.

…are to be our holy warrior, Syben, Evayah just managed to catch.

From the cadence and timbre of that commanding voice she was certain it had to be Padis’i Tarsus; the priest who arrived earlier that morning. He continued, but Evayah could only decipher part of what he said, and only when he chose to emphasis a particular statement. …long has the Empire reigned unchallenged over the skies of Aethosphere…

Favoring the biting cold of the floor over the tell-tale giveaway of her sandals, Evayah slipped off her footwear. Her breath caught in her throat as the deep chill soaked into the tender soles of her feet, crawling in so deep as to make the bones in her legs hurt, but she pushed it from her mind and stalked forward regardless. Her footsteps padded whisper-quiet.

The ancient stonework had worn into a trough running the passage’s center and served to guide her. She used the wall as a crutch, finding comfort in the sturdy construction, the thick foundation that had stood for centuries uncounted, and would no doubt stand for centuries more. Some of the other orphans talked of the monastery having been built by ancient Maaj’i sorcerers as a fortress in the battle against the Enox Unon, but Friar Ethendul assured her it was built by simple monks of the faith, and not more than a thousand years back.

Regardless of the truth, she prayed to the isle spirits, the Eidolons, that those who built it built it sturdy, and with plenty of places to hide. Give me the courage to move forward, she recited silently, and hide me as the light grows stronger. And grace Syben with the good wits to be careful with these men. He is so lost in his own turbulent thoughts. Though she was loath to admit she was just as lost.

The ancient walls eventually turned on her despite her prayers, offering nothing in the way of shelter as she moved along the curved passage, just an unbroken line of darkness with nothing but fungus and mold growing in the grout to interrupt the monotony.

I don’t understand how that will help, Syben’s voice rang out ahead, edged with a disbelief bordering on panic. Evayah felt her heart twist within her chest just hearing his voice, and her mouth parted so a soft gasp of longing could escape. She dared to push deeper into the crypt, finding the ceiling lowering with each passing meter.

I suspect you don’t, responded Padis'i Tarsus, his unmistakable voice edged with sympathy as it drifted from a side-chamber not far off. Imperiling light came pouring out from a recess ahead, painting the opposing wall in a brilliant hue of orange. The ethereal shadows of men—too many to count—drifted and merged into a living canvas. Evayah dared to draw closer still as Tarsus asked Syben if he held true to the divine guidance of the Eidolons. "Do you acknowledge that it is through their grace alone that all the isles across this world we live upon remain above the reach of the Shrouded Abyss, and free from the aethal sanguisuga that slumbers within?"

Of—of course, stammered the boy.

Evayah felt Syben’s incredulity as keenly as her own. Why would a padis’i question the faith of a devote acolyte… and so accusingly?" But it was her father’s words, spoken at a time when Evayah was too young to understand, which held an answer of sorts: "Religious usurpers," he’d uttered, spitting into the dirt ahead of a walking Authenticate. He grabbed his daughter’s hand immediately after and pulled her into the tenement crush of Seraphim Heights. Why he’d said it, or did what he did after was a mystery. Evayah could only speculate, while the monks described it as a dark chapter in the history of the Gardayan Republic. Often they used its events in cautionary sermons against hubris and corruption, and yet Henri’s words stuck with her, resurfacing in the cold crypt.

Without a doubt! Syben proclaimed brashly. Evayah didn’t need to see him to see the look of defiance that often accompanied that tone. He could be so fiercely passionate at times, more so than any other living in the monastery. Amongst the other orphan acolytes he reigned supreme as the most adventurous, claiming someday he’d leave and prove himself out in the world.

"And what of the Reformation Church of the Amhan Firinn? You know there are still shadows that hold true to the reign of the False Mois’i."

I have never followed the False Mois’i—

Nor would you, as that was before your time… But tell me, have any of the monks been teaching forbidden things, speaking forbidden words?

No… I don’ think so anyway.

Good. You know these are perilous times we live in, and having Heretics in our midst undermines our struggle? There is a devil-worshipping enemy out there tearing atmium from the divine forms of our guardians, and using it to keep aloft their unholy machines. These blasphemers, they spread like locusts from one isle to the next leaving the Eidolons with barely enough strength to stay afloat. You know this enemy of which I speak?

Uncertainty hedged Syben’s response. …the Iron Empire—

Precisely! Boomed the padis’i.

A nation of the vile Hierarch species, and those who have become our sworn enemy! added another with pure rancor.

But… why now, why this? protested Syben meekly. We have sworn ourselves to isolation.

Isolation, but not cowardice, Syben, corrected the cleric. "We have never given up the holy struggle. When it was clear we couldn’t match them in the skies with ships and guns we pulled back and looked within ourselves to find the answer; and it came to us in the form of you and the other orphans… So tell me, Syben, do you also believe, without a doubt, that the Reformation Church of the Amhan Firinn acts in accordance with the will of the Eidolons? That it is through the Church alone that our people can know their true guidance?"

Evayah had reached the chamber’s edge, where the wavering torch light streamed in curtains of brilliance. She had to see Syben, to make sure it was him and not some changeling who’d stolen his voice. Taking a deep breath she peeked around the corner.

Yes, absolutely, replied the young man as the heat of half a dozen torches greeted Evayah’s probing gaze. Squinting, she could just make out her companion. Syben’s sapphire eyes were wide with apprehension as the pillars of dark men towered around him. Two of them Evayah recognized at once as Knightasad templars, their polished suits of silver armor gleaming red in the fire light, gaussbolt rifles held against their chests like religious talismans. Three others lurking in the nearby shadows she readily recoiled from. The phantoms were draped in black robes and wore terrifying beaked-masks of sutured leather. They had to be members of the Order of Authenticates, the ones her father had spat at all those years back. Their disturbing bird-like coverings could belong to no other group, but why had her father hated them?

Authenticates were emissaries of the Mois’i, the Holy Mother and head of the Church. After her father died, it had been men from that secret brotherhood that carried her off to the safety of the monastery. She should have been grateful, but instead she felt nothing but dread. And somehow, seeing them here, felt too surreal—too dire. They were not known to travel idly.

Another man, standing apart from the rest but nearest to her, appeared to be Candaran of all things. The fiery, red eyes, tanned skin, and tear-drop shaped ears gave him away. And though their species was tolerated in the trading ports along Gardaya’s protected borders, they were not permitted to travel freely within the Republic. She observed him critically, but the foreigner’s simple leather jumpsuit and bird-shaped insignia gave nothing away of his intentions, and only added to the mystery of Syben’s summons.

As she watched, the unidentified man pulled a water-pouch from his side and took a sip, offering it to the last person present, who happened to be a tall and elegantly-shaped Elwyn, a gentleman, and richly dressed. His red robes were the finest that Evayah had ever seen and the gold embroidery was so intricate as to border on miraculous. The man waved away the offer. You realize the Padis’i Council is the preeminent servant of the Reformation Church— he spoke instead to the boy shuffling nervously in their midst.

Syben nodded, and there was no mistaking that it was Padis’i Tarsus he was nodding to. Evayah had seen the councilmen from afar during each of his recent visits, but only once up close, when he’d toured the girl’s dorm not more than six months past. They were already lined up in the corridor when the cleric appeared. He regally strolled the hall, pausing at each girl only long enough to glance them over. Exactly what he was searching for only he’d known, but Evayah had hoped that he wouldn’t find what he was looking for in her. As he passed girl after girl she began to panic, believing that his dark gaze and severe face would soon be scrutinizing her, but fortune stayed him two doors down when he settled in front of Maybelle, a horse-faced fourteen year old who’d come to the monastery three years prior.

"My dear," he’d announced joyfully with a clear and resonating voice, This is your luckiest of days. It was the same voice, rolling through the crypt; enthusiastic and commanding. "There you have it, Syben. Trust in the decision of the council, for it is the Will of the Eidolons. I know the crusade we have charged you with must seem like a contradiction… against what you’ve been taught, against all you hold dear—against all you believe in—but know that even the Eidolons are not above being sacrificed for a righteous cause. Sometimes an infected limb needs to be removed to save the organism, you see? It’s just like that for these isles crawling with agents of the Enox Unon, but we have the power to stop them… you have the power to stop them."

Me? Wonder filled Syben’s youthful blue eyes.

Yes, with your unique link to the Aether. The cleric let the notion sink in before asking, So tell me, will you become the hero that our people need, Syben—that the Eidolons need?

I—I don’t know…

"Tell me, have you ever heard of the Maaj’i?"

Have I! Of course! Syben said eagerly. His sapphire eyes brightened as he grinned wide. It was the same look that overcame him whenever he talked passionately of escaping the tedious life of the monastery and finding adventure in the world beyond. "Legendary heroes of old who battled the Enox Unon during the Great Rebellion!"

Tarsus smiled and clapped. Yes, yes, wonderful tales aren’t they? Did you know that my favorite has always been the sacrifice of Delthian, the Selfless? Do you recall the tale? He circled the boy in a flow of robes, but it reminded Evayah of a vulture circling a carcass. She ducked away when his face came into view.

It was in the very beginning of the Great Rebellion, continued the priest, "when the Maaj’i were still struggling to unite the far-flung species of Aethosphere under one banner. A traitor had revealed their secret stronghold of Aza Vereen, and The Enox Unon sent his Nequam to destroy them on the Eve of Shadows. These demons came in the dead of night, under the Blood Moon, directing their Dreadnaught Basilicas to rain fire and lighting upon the Isle of Storms. Everyone should have died, but Delthian stole away from the fortress, climbing to the summit of Mount Unity alone to draw their attention, draw it through aetrelasa—"

Magic, interrupted the Candaran. He sounded disbelieving, almost resentful.

A crude Candaran term, but yes, said Tarsus. "And never had anyone seen such a display as put forth by Delthian that night. Filled with such divine faith and selflessness as he was; his… magic was far greater than that of even a hundred Maaj’i combined, and the Nequam knew at once that their enemies must have rallied on the mountain to combat their fleet. So they left the fortress—left it burning, but not defeated—and they descended upon lone Delthian. And though the Selfless One was killed on the summit of Mount Unity that night; the host of the Maaj’i escaped on swift airships to later raise the greatest army that ever was. Without Delthian’s sacrifice none of that would ever have been possible—none of this around you would be possible. We’d all still be thralls to the Enox Unon. You see my point?"

I do. Syben’s face was filled with awe, and Evayah felt a coil of unease creep through her like a snake.

"So then, will you become the holy warrior of the Eidolons?" Tarsus demeanor turned somber, even as his mint green eyes filled with eager expectation.

I will. Syben nodded slowly.

Evayah felt unease blossom into sickening dread. All she wanted was to rush over, grab Syben’s hand, and take him back to the dorms so they could be together—happily ever after.

Of all the young acolytes Tarsus had taken away, not a one had yet returned. The first (of what had become six thus far), was gone five years without a word. Evayah had even ventured to ask Tibias Ethendul about it one day, not long ago, and the kindly old monk had told her not to fret, but even his wrinkled old face couldn’t hide the secret apprehension burning behind those cloudy eyes. She knew him too well to be fooled by thinly veiled assurances. He was just as disturbed about it as she was.

Good, then it’s settled. Tarsus clapped his hands suddenly and Evayah jumped. You will go to King’s Isle. There’s a piece of equipment we’re currently arranging to join you there, and once both of you have arrived, we can set about our task. But don’t worry yourself over the details, you’re role is quite simple actually. All you need to do is facilitate the Eidolon’s sacrifice.

Sacrifice? Evayah was sure she hadn’t heard it correctly. The Church would never order anyone to sacrifice an Eidolon. Doing harm to an isle spirit was against the Great Convention—against every teaching of her religion. Her mind reeled, fighting between the conflicting impulses of reason and perception. There was no denying what she’d heard, no matter how much she tried to say otherwise, but she couldn’t think of a reason why Tarsus would want Syben to commit such a horrible act. If only she could get her friend alone; talk to him and find out what it was all really about; then maybe she could understand.

In her shock, Evayah failed to realize the Candaran was turning in her direction, not until they were looking right at one another. The foreign man’s heavy face was almost childish in its vacant sort of confusion, but it morphed, reddened and opened wide. A spy! His voice was shrill and his eyes bulging as he pointed an accusing finger at her.

The rest of the entourage turned.

The last thing she saw were gaussbolt rifles rising in her direction before she turned and bolted into the darkness. Evayah begged the Eidolon of Aberdeen to ensure her fleet footing as she ran, and it seemed that prayer was answered as the crypt soared by around her. Clamorous pursuit followed; harsh yells telling her to stop even as she mounted the stairs and started her spiraling climb to escape. As she burst into the evening-dusted nave, over half a dozen monks turned simultaneously from the rows of their wooden benches, their eyes wide with confusion as the tranquility of evening prayer was shattered.

Evayah, called out an elderly man, both short of stature and hair. Behind his small round spectacles teal-hued eyes flushed with grandfatherly compassion. The terrified acolyte froze in place, not really seeing the monk, dazzled even by the weak light trickling in from the roughhewn windows along the ceiling. My dear, you’re early—evening mass is not for another—Wait… Evayah, what were you doing down in the crypts? What’s wrong, girl?

But Evayah had no breath with which to respond, and the sudden clatter of armor shaking the stairs under foot spurred her to action. She bolted even as Friar Ethendul reached out to comfort her, leaving him gaping at empty air in his concern.

Stop that girl! ordered a Knightasad as his voice thundered through the still sanctuary like a peal of lighting. Evayah threw a darting glance back to see the armored templar shoving Ethendul out of the way. Worse still, behind him an Authenticate came fluttering up like a black-feathered carrion buzzard eager to scavenge a kill. An old and overwhelming terror filled her heart. We have to get out of here, Evayah! Her father’s voice intruded from her memories, still urging her on, Evayah, move it!

A nearby monk took a swipe at her, just missing the generous folds of her snowy robes. She turned and sprang towards the clapboard doors losing her hair-wrap along the way. Other monks tried to galvanize their squat forms into action, grabbing with wrinkled arms as she easy dodged between them. They attempted herding her into the pews to entrap her, but her young legs proved to be their undoing. In a panic washed in memories of her father’s apartment on Market street, Evayah climbed up on the pews and jumped over them one by one, until she finally hurled herself through the weathered doors along the western wall.

"Evayah, I need you to calm down and listen to me, honey!" In the glare of the outside light her vision washed to lavender briefly before fading back to normal. Outside, dusk had painted the courtyard stretching around her in ruddy colors. Overhead, the dissipating clouds promised a cool night after the hot tropical afternoon. Scattered about, engaged in evening chores, other acolytes stood up and turned at the sound of all the commotion.

Evayah, called out a plain looking girl with a mousy face, but Evayah just blew past her friend Tianna, towards a wagon parked near the red stone walls of the kitchen. Behind her the nave erupted into an uproar and she thought for a moment to hide in her room in the girl’s dormitory.

No, that’ll be the first place they’ll look, she reminded herself, bolting past the dorm’s narrow outside door, setting her course across the grounds to the fertile green wash of the inner gardens. The scent of sun-warmed vegetables—tomatoes mostly—hung ripe in the mounting humidity. Pushing her way along the hedge row of corn stalks and sugar cane, she thundered over the stone bridge across the abbey’s meandering brook, bound for the open front gate on the other side.

An old and world-weary friar appeared beneath the arched entrance, pulling behind him an equally old and world-weary mule. He offered her a hardy wave and a toothless grin as she breezed by and turned north.

Dark and impenetrable jungle loomed ahead like a wall beyond the grassy lawn, but she didn’t so much as hesitate to blunder in. The heavy scent of wet vegetation washed over her even as branches grasped at her loose clothing and smacked her in the face. Very quickly the world beneath the canopy turned dark, but she pushed on regardless, venturing blindly into the dense foliage, spurred by instinctual fear of being caught. In her mind the crypt and the woods seamlessly merged into one flight. She hardly remembered running through the crypt at all, or even the nave for that matter. The courtyard was an impression of light and the garden simply an impression of smells. All that truly remained to her was the depths of the savage jungle, the towering trees, the brilliant flowers, and the leaves that stood so big she could easily hide within their folds.

Evayah didn’t stop moving until she hit the very edge of the isle. It came up suddenly, the earth giving way to sky unfathomable. She barely managed to skid to a stop in time at the rim, and only by catching hold of a vine did she save herself from a deathly fall. Eyes wide with terror—gasping for breath in the stifling air—Evayah stared as rocks and clumps of dirt tumbled down towards the Shrouded Abyss. Several kilometers below the floating landmass, steaming spires of mist beckoned, inviting her to join them with sinuous fingers weaving back and forth. Amongst the swirl, a modest one-hundred meter fogworm humped and coiled its way through the scalding cauldron, nipping and biting at what debris disturbed its claim to that stretch of vaporous tide.

Turning her gaze to the northwestern horizon, Evayah spied Giama Isle hanging like an emerald jewel over a hammered plate of platinum clouds. Beyond it, the dark line of the Dragon’s Shoal lay as a tangled feature of volcanic rock. Directly west, where the sun had begun to set, an airship—a silvered beetle with gossamer wings—came crawling through the clouds on course for some distant sky. Tattering at the edge, Evayah wondered briefly what it would be like to step forward and fly.

With her feet cut open and bleeding, and her sides gripped with debilitating cramps, Evayah instead stepped back and collapsed, exhausted, into a bed of ferns at the cliff’s edge. Birds took flight and nearby thresher monkeys howled and screeched, and a thousand insects chirped in unified protest at her intrusion. She let its chorus sooth her as she lay panting for breath, not even caring as the dampness seeped into her tattered and muddy robes, and the tangle of her uncovered hair.

Overhead, the fronds and leaves swayed in the high winds off the open skies, occasionally parting a window up through the canopy to the endless blue of a dying sky above. She laid there for a long time as the sun crept into the mist, and the sky wet from blue to purple to ebony. She wasn’t sure what to do or what to think. She had seen things she wasn’t meant to, heard things not intended for her ears, and the unknown repercussion of it all filled her with uncertainty.

Evayah’s hand fell to the necklace around her throat. She wished desperately that her father were still alive to rescue her, to provide his loving guidance. She squeezed the stones, trying to find his essence in them, but all she found was emptiness. He was simply a memory in a room in Avalon. A memory of a man lying on a floor with jewels scattered around him, clutching his chest and gasped out his last painful words: I’m sorry for what’s to become of you…

Papa! She screamed through her lonely mind, they want to sacrifice an Eidolon!

Henri Dufleur’s voice came whispering back on Aethosphere’s timeless breeze: Don’t you ever blame yourself…

Chapter 2

Up on the crow’s reach of the airship Chimera, bathed blue by the radiating glow of her deck-mounted atmium core, a weather-beaten and aged aeronaut stood alone beneath a morning as it warmed to life. At that hazy hour, all stood in harmony—in the hushed silence of tranquility—just the way Captain Bar Bazzon liked it.

It was the sort of morning—the sort of sky—he lived for, powerful, and with its own unique beauty and character. He could live a thousand years and never know two that were the same, and sometimes that made him lament he was the only one who seemed to care. Eleven other souls lived within the bronzsteel hull of the vessel floating beneath his boots, but none spared even a second to appreciate such fragile moments—moments caught fleetingly suspended in a narrow strip of sky, existing tenuously between frozen, suffocating space and boiling, caustic mist.

Only Sylvia seemed to understand… but then in sickness one has to appreciate every moment knowing full-well the last could come at any time. And a good morning to you, darling, whispered Bar, thinking back on his beloved wife as a soft breeze ruffled through the shag of his red hair, just as her fingers had year ago.

In Bar’s own narrow strip of survival, the sky around him ebbed in soothing tones leftover from a retreating night. Tones brushed in lavender and wispy blues… tones easy on tired eyes. But that peace was hurdling towards the shadowy stretches of Aethosphere’s western horizon, in full retreat from a day promising more hardship.

Next to him the radiance of the ship’s blue core fluctuated almost imperceptibly.

I’m missing you powerfully this morning… and I could use you by my side right about now. Things have been hard without you, honey, too troublesome since you passed. Bar refused to look at the atmium crystal blinking for his attention beside him. I just need a moment—a moment to rest, to catch my breath, and collect my wits. I’ve always been a hunted man, but now I’m feeling it. This sky just keeps getting smaller and smaller, and my enemies—my problem—just keep multiplying. I need that balance you were always able to find… that you always gave me.

"We’ve always lived like the isles floating of our world," Sylvia had explained the night she told him of the Necrosis rotting her from the inside out. We’re caught between danger, caught between the promises of death from both above and from below. My affliction is no different really. I am here now, and that’s what we have to focus on, not the past or the future—above or below—but right here and right now. If not… then we’ll be consumed, just as assuredly as the boiling mist or the frozen sky would consume us if we stray too far off course.

Squinting west, Bar studied the murky quagmire where frozen sky met the endless Abyss, where bruised clouds fused with platinum mist and a safe course was impossible to determine in the wash. Bar keenly felt like that horizon—lost. They’d just finished outrunning trouble back in the west of the Sargasso Sky—just barely outrunning it, more to the point—and now the atmium, and its telling wink, promised the arrival of even more problems, more worries.

"But remember, Bar, just because we can’t tell the difference from here, doesn’t mean there isn’t a way through. You just need a little faith." Sylvia’s words, spoken on a morning long since passed, breezed over his apprehension. Captain Bazzon closed his eyes, calming his nerves as he drank in the humid air, letting the floral aromas of the tropics coalesce into a potion unmatched by any wily street alchemist. The scent of gardenia and lilac was not unlike his departed wife’s perfume.

At least the Chimera had found safe harbor on the cliff edge of Macaw Isle, and Parakeet Bay seemed rural enough to have never heard of the Scourge Bazzon. Maybe he could relax, he’d promised the crew that much, a few days reprieve. Bar himself wanted to stand like that forever, in that teetering moment before dawn’s awakening, listening to the wind and the ship creaking beneath his feet. But then sitting still brought trouble; sitting still brought death. A decade and a half on the run from imperials and pirates reminded him of that, and the core waxing and waning next to him only served to reinforce it.

Bar knew their problems were his own damn fault. He didn’t need his guilt, or the rest of the crew for that matter, reminding him of that all week. But what did they know of desperate times and all. He’d fought his best to make sure they were insulated from the woes of flying; of finding good paying work while avoiding the demons of Bar’s sordid past; of flying between dangers.

On Mistmourn Isle he only did what he thought necessary to survive, and if that meant taking from farmers, well then so be it. That rice was slated to go to the Iron Empire anyway. Yet, he couldn’t help but feel that the current core situation was somehow Karma coming back to kick him in the ass. After all, Karma really did owe him a good ass-kicking or two. So when the first indications of light warmly caressed his bearded face, Captain Bazzon’s eyes snapped open—alert.

A seed of dappled orange blossomed over the gentle curve of the world. A herald of rosy banners followed, of clouds powdered pink by the eminent arrival of the sun. The procession slowly, relentlessly, marched up the eastern sky, sheering past the snarled green vegetation growing rife along the isle’s fogbound rim. There, a silent line of mossy green warehouses peeked out from the tropical brush, sodden but groaning to life as the sun crested their angled roofs and set the corrugated tin ticking in the heat.

In a distant area of the wharf, a low-toned horn let out a blast, followed moments later by several high-pitched whistles.

From the solar glare appeared a lone airship, small and hazy from a distance, drifting lazily amongst a flock of balloon guppies, about a kilometer over the mist line. The procession rose steadily towards the long row of wharves reaching out over the cliff’s abrupt face. From the boardwalk men could be heard coughing and sneezing as their ghostly figures wandered forlornly out of the receding fog to venture onto the docks and greet the newest arrival. Judging by the shape of its hazy silhouette, like greasy